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Zyphus Alarik
Zyphus Alarik By:Emperors Potato, Lord of Dawi and Spuds Chapter One: The Lupon Sanctum Dark Void surrounded me. And the rest of my crew, for that matter. Silence. Vastness. Emptiness. Just out the window. We could feel it. It was almost as if you could touch it. This was space. And though our ship sped through it, it has made its presence known. We were almost at that damned asteroid Lupric. My crew and I were on a mission, sent by the Union. They would pay us handsomely for the head of the master of the Sanctum we were sent to infiltrate. And I have no love lost for those of the Combined Mercanti, so I obliged. I, being the captain, have a duty to the crew of the Stargazer, and thus must...somewhat reluctantly, split the profit. I stood up out of my bed. My room was small, yet the largest in the whole ship. I stretched. It was a large metal room bereft of much detail, its insides containing little more than my bed, a bookshelf, and a chest of my most valued possessions. Everything else was behind. I got up and pressed the proper code into the door. It slid open, revealing the long living quarters hallway. It was early in the morning. Few were open save our pilot, Kurryt Kury. I guess it would be a good time to tell you he’s not exactly human. Good old Kury is a man I met back on Sarat. He's a scruffy looking Saratian, obviously the natives of that world I mentioned. He is, as the majority of his race, the color and texture of sand. Short, to conserve energy. Four head ridges, each containing hair. For pheromones or something. For survival in the desert his race needs little sleep or rest, and there oddly dexterous hands made Kury a good pilot. Now, enough of that. I walked down the hallway into the bridge. A large half-circle room with a large window spanning the whole room. He sat in the pilot's chair near the guiding mechanism in the front. A large disk shaped table was behind these with a map of the sector. Rows of computers and stations surround the walls of the bridge. “Kury! How goes the flight?” I said this as I walked beside his chair. “Char, Captain Zyphus. It goes well. I prepare the stealth shield for entrance! There detectors won’t know what hit them, thank Hectus for the Union’s generosity providing us with that tech…” Oh, that Saratian. Never stops calling me captain. I've given up trying. It was nice he called me by my first name though. Bastard Son had never warmed up to me as a last name. (The literal meaning of the Saratian word Alarik) “And what makes you up so early, Captain?” he continued. “I told you not to...never mind. And if you truly wish to know, I've had nightmares. How are we going to survive this place? Its heavily guarded to all those without permission. I can't let us all die here!” I said. My voice was a little too loud. I hoped it hadn’t woken up my crew. “Well captain, I suppose there is little we can do but follow the given plan.” He said this with a bit of a smirk. He enjoyed watching me struggle against my given title. Honorifics were a large part of his culture, and we both knew he would never give up using them. We were closer then ever. The light of the sun of the Viniat system shined down on this asteroid, revealing a sprawling Temple-Market on its surface. It had a large shield around it to prevent unwanted ships. But, thanks to our generous sponsor the Union, we had the rare tech to bypass it. I took a seat next to my friend. “Whatever comes ahead, I am glad to face it with you, Captain.” He said. His rough voice showed deep affection and friendship. Loyalty. Since the day I saved his life when we were both children, our friendship deepened yet further. My crew is the only family I have. My band of brothers. I hope I didn’t bring them to die in the Temple-Markets of that cursed Luctor. I passed by the final hour before wake up reading over the plans. I pulled up the Holobook projector. The Seal of the Union appeared before opening up to the plan. I went to the description of the location. The asteroid of Lupon, named after the Trade God Luctor of the Lucatrians. The asteroid was home to a Temple, which doubles as a massive market containing an underground smuggling ring stealing valuable war supplies from my generous benefactor, the Union. This semi secret rings leader is who we were sent to kill. A certain Untira Untiri. I pulled up the holographic image of him. Average Lucatrian. The large forehead, black lips, extremely pale and thin features and mostly bald head all checked out. He was decked in one of there priest robes...plain white...covered in gold. Inscribed with those holiest of words, Love Thyself. Lord, they seemed to love that one. It was like the whole race was bent on seeking a profit, one way or another. It’s almost unfair really. I'm a mercenary, yes, but at least I have morals. He deals in war profiteering and makes three times what I do! Now I read his biography. Famed master of a band of smugglers. Currently trying to strike a deal with our enemy, the Carrion Rehgnum. Take him down, steal the weapons, return to Union. Should be simple, right? I lead his further background. Also from that cesspool Sarat. Made me think. If my crew and I had just had a little different of a journey after we finally left that world, would we be smugglers like him? If we turned towards Combined Mercanti worlds? Of course not...were too good for that...Except for maybe Vik. Now the time had come! It was finally time to brief the crew and get going. Everybodies alarms went off and I heard the familiar sound of footsteps...and the slick sound of slime, and it being vacuumed up. as they awoke, left their rooms and came to the bridge. They lined up in a row, except from Kury, to busy piloting our esteemed vessel. Vik Kassel, his older brother Don Kassel. Two good Mucs. Mucs are. Of course, tall grey beings with patterns not unlike tattoos decorating their muscular bodies, and large strips of hair delicately shaved on every limb of their body. Vik was younger. More impulsive. Don is more cool headed. The oldest in our little party since we were children. Not a man of many words. Next was the hideous Fernd. Waxley Ramsfutton. Fernds are hideous. They even disgust each other. Blibbering blob like massive with smaller blobs of black and crusty looking, yet smooth and slimed flesh. He had a special Vacuum to clean this up. No bones. Two unevenly side three fingered arms. Can’t wear clothes. No face to speak of. Sadly, this kind hearted soul, like the rest of his unfortunate race, was dedicated towards the pursuit of friendship. He was very glad to find acceptance in us. Not much of a thinker, or a fighter, he was the most diplomatic when the intended target wasn’t repulsed. Last was Tim. Short for Timothy Striker. The other human on board. My best friend, instead of my messy hair his was neatly trimmed. His clothes were fancier. He enjoyed this created air of luxury due to never having real luxury himself. Like me, we both dreamed of this job getting us rich. And with luck, it would. We were certainly on our way. You might notice we are all men. All the women were taken by the Sand Men. I heard a click as Kury turned on the holographic projector of the mission plan and location. Large temple building in the center of the asteroid with a tower, in which we will find the target. Surrounding it will be markets. Enter the temple in disguise with cards given to us, get to the tower and kill the target. Find out the location of his stolen goods and put them on the ship to be returned for a extra profit. Kury also said, “Waxley stays here. You could jeopardize the mission...you can’t even wear the disguise.” this was met with a sad sounding noise, though you could never really tell from Waxley. His voice, which sounds very Alien, I can’t really describe it so I leave it to you, said in a somewhat sad tone, I think, “But...what about all the friends I could meet?” We had to explain to the poor guy the CM is our enemy and we can’t be friends. Another sad noise followed and he slimed away back into his room. I looked at Kury. He felt bad about having to say it. He really liked Waxley. There was a moment of silence broken when Vik spoke up. “Hey, uh, are we gonna get going or what?” His brother simply nodded in approval. “We shall. Remember, no heavy weapons. Pistols at the most.” I said. This caused a sigh from Don, are heavy weapons expert, you could say. He had two handed Plasma gun, and loved to use it. Vik didn’t care. Kury didn’t really either, Kury liked his pistol. And you must understand with his size, it wasn’t that small. When finished we walked into the gear room, to the side. Our ship was essentially shaped like a rectangle with a curved circular front and a back lower then the rest for cargo storage. When landed it is left through the side. On both sides are one wing, metal curved things to help steer. We entered the gear room. It had about three weapons racks. Some gear. Anything else we supplied for ourselves, for example all of us had personal deflector shields of varying degree. And I had a Vibro Knife. The only Vibro blade on the ship. Made of Vibrom, this rare weapon vibrates at some vast speed, it can pass through deflector shields and most items. When it’s turned on of course, at the moment the blade is slipped inside its hilt. One by one we put on black and gold robes to disguise ourselves. “Hey Alarik?” Tim said. I turned to face him. He had his robe on already. “Would it be weird for us to be there? Rarely are people of this parties species on a CM occupied area. Especially here, it’s all Lucatrian. I replied with, “As long as we have the identification, we will be fine.” We slipped our pistols to our sides under our robes and hid our cards in pockets. We were finished. We walked down the main hallway once more to the ships exit. As we were all leaving, Waxley flew the ship into position. We succeeded in making it through the shield. We all jumped out in one of the deserted streets of the Temple Market. We made our way to the temple. Hundreds of aliens crossed through the streets of the market, buying and trading...sometimes dealing in illegal goods. But I didn’t care. They were vibrant. Many colored streets booths set up with aliens behind them. Humans were rare as were other Aliens, and most of those were aliens from the Combine. The majority was Lucatrians. Some gave us the side eye as we walked past, not buying a thing. Others asked us, as we were disguised as priests to be blessed with great fortune. I noticed I couldn’t find Vik. “Hey Don, where’s you’re brother?” Don stiffened. A little bit of fear, then anger crossed his eyes. He turned around and searched the area with his larger then human eyes. And he found what he was searching for. Vik was a few stalls back, trying to buy what was possibly a illegally gained Vibro knife. Don ran to him and said. “Brother! I told you we could do that later. Maybe we can find something in the temple. No commerce!” He had a deep and commanding voice. I was always surprised Vik didn’t listen to it more often. I feel like he would be better off for it. Vik begrudgingly listened. And cut the deal, disappointing the slick looking Lucatrian trying to make the deal, who skunk back into the shadows of his booth. We continued walking to the temple and made it to the gates. Statues flanked both sides of the grand golden door. The building was made of a grand decorated white stone detailed with gold, enshrined above the large golden door were the words “Love Thyself.” “Such foolish pride...self absorbed Kalkar-” Kury tried to speak. I stopped him. Speaking out agaisn’t this place could get us unwanted attention. We walked up to the temple and slid the proper card into the slot on the door. We had fake identities. I was…Cazar Celag. Ugh. The metal gate revealed itself to simply be a sliding metal door. It slid to the side and we walked through. There was a large hallway with a slightly curved roof. There were great windows of stained glass...colored like gold. The long hallway had a variety of rooms attached. Many priests wandered through the halls in there robes, some making trade deals. We needed to move to the tower. There was a staircase on the side. Vik tried to run to it. He was stopped by his brother Don who whispered to him. “We need to be careful. Don’t hurry to much.” He told him. Vik sighed. So we all walked. Now we reached the staircase. We had to be careful to avoid unwanted eyes. If they even got a glance of our species there suspicions could be aroused. Humans and others rarely came here. I put my hand on my knife as we walked upwards. The expansive staircase broke into many rooms to the side as we went up with hopes to ascend to the top. The stairs were clean, some were gold. Many of the walls had words from there holy book, The Manual, on them. Love Thyself seems to have been a favorite, along with other lovable lines such as “Make Profit.” We could tell we wear nearing the top. The air felt cleaner, as did the stairs themselves. Finally, we made it to the top tower. These stairs came out of the floor, so I peaked out as I was first, and could not be seen by them. I heard shifting behind me from my allies pulling out there weapons. Always a good mind, Don whispered to them to do it quietly. I took out my own. From what I could see our target was having a conversation with the other priests. Untira was quickly noticed due to him having much more extravagant clothing then his peers. I took my pistol and aimed it. But first I listened to what they were talking about. He spoke to two other men. “Your sent to relay information from the combine?” One said. “Yes. The enigma is cracked. The new systems have opened. We need to increase operations to bring them to the new Explorators. For the good of the Combine...and, more importantly, for Profit!” Untira told them. Now, this was getting interesting. I had begun recording. Extra information could fetch a higher price from the Union. They began speaking in there native tongue and I could no longer understand. It was frustrating, who knows what money I was missing out on? So I signaled the others to prepare. I prepped my pistol, aimed...and fired. The bullet blasted straight into the back of one of the men, wearing no armor or shield he slumped over, dead. I didn’t have one of those fancy hard light beams, so I’m afraid it left quite a mess. Bullets do just fine. I rushed out of my hiding spot along with the others. I ran up to the second man and cut through him with my Vibro knife. The whole time our target had been frantically whispering into a machine on his arm. Vik smashes into him with his shoulder in a powerful change and knocked him into the wall. His brother Don grabbed him by the neck and slowly lifted him up. He put on his most intimidating face...and by the forger that man could be terrible to behold. His fangs...makes me shiver sometimes to think of it. He growled to our target...“Where are they hidden?” Frantically grabbing at the hands locked around his throat Untira struggled to form words, let alone speak. Vik seemed to be enjoying it. Kury just had a light smirk. Tim was inspecting the corpses and I just watched. Finally that smuggler spoke. “Dur...est...vurger...Han?” He said, in his native language. Don brought his face closer and growled once more. “We heard you speak. We know you speak Astri. Do so or die!” This continued to scare Untira. I almost felt bad for him. “I don’t know of any cargo! I swear! None!” Don smashes him against the wall. This went on for a while until I realized it was Like he was stalling. I heard something like a metal tapping crawling up the tower walls. This strange sound had been picked up by Tim, stood up from looting one of the corpses. Then I heard a crack. We all heard it. We heard a stifled laugh come from Untira. He has planned something and it had worked. Don threw him to the floor. He wasn’t in much of a place to run. The crack grew and the noises grew in sound, until suddenly the domed roof have way, revealing...a giant metal spider. It descended onto us quick as a Star ship. It grabbed poor Don with a metal tendril. This put his brother into a rage and he attacked the thing with his pistol, making a few dents. I saw Tim notice something glisten on Untira’a side...a vibro knife. His eyes looked from it to the beast. I understood what he was thinking and drew my own. He rushed and grabbed it as I drew mine. We charged at the same time to the spiders many legs. He jumped up to power his strike, and sliced through the one holding Don in a single swing. I did the same to it’s other front leg, and it to was sliced off. Once Don was free he began beating it with his incredibly strong fists while Tim and I kept cutting. One the last leg was gone Tim jumped on it, and slammed the knife through its head. It sparked for a minute, then powered off. The machine equivalent for death. Tim mumbled under his breath, “Hate machines...” He held aloft his new dagger, admiring it. After much struggling Untira finally stood up. “My knife..birth right...give it to me...I beg...” his struggle was fruitless as he was kicked back to the floor by Don. “One last time...the loot. Where is it?” Don growled. “Temple basement...now please let me go..” Untira said. We didn’t. I shot him in the head. Couldn’t let him summon any more machines. Tim, collect something with that new knife of yours, prove we did it. He obliged. Another reason we didn’t take Waxley....not one for violence. Neither was Kury. He was the only one who looked disgusted by the recent happenings. But he understood there necessity. We rushed down to the ground level of the building. We had to hurry somewhat sneakily for Dons cloak was ripped and we did not want to arouse suspicion. The bodies were disposed of, meaning disintegrated by a little pin attached to there body. So there was no evidence of the crime. The only remaining part is whatever trophy Timothy took. “I hope you understand I’m keeping this knife here.” Tim said as we ran. I silently nodded and Continued. We descended down a second staircase. Now we came to a basement...however, the door was locked. “How are we supposed to get through...” Tim said. However he was shortly interrupted. Kury slipped a card into the slot and the door opened. “What was that?” Tim said. “It was Untira’s identity card Char.” He did this odd little laugh common to his species, and we walked in. Now the room where this cargo was held was a large dark room. It had many crates hidden in it. Now, our problem was how to extract it. “Kury. Got the teleporters?” He nodded. The Union gave us special tech to teleport things. Not people, things. We attached the other end to our ships cargo area. Kury ran through on his little legs and attached teleported to all the cargo. It flashed and disappeared into the ship. “Now we have to get out.” Tim said, somewhat obviously as everybody had this on there minds anyways. I nodded. “It’s been fun. But I’m wondering what Waxley is up to.” I said. Tim spoke up again. “By the way, I saw a nice shop outside. Can I visit it before we leave?” I agreed. Couldn’t hurt to stay just a few minutes for Tim to get something he liked. “The others will wait at the ship. You can go alone...with me.” I smiled a little as I said it. Tim nodded. We left the building together back into the streets. They still buzzed with activity. The others went towards the ship. The door was locked, and it was held to the ground with grav tech. I watched them scan there faces and enter. We went to find that store that Tim spoke of. It was a little stall. A booth. Owned by another human. “Another human? In these parts? Nice to see ya!” He said. He tipped his fedora. It became evident Tim saw a hat he liked. “Howdie. I’ll take this one...” he picked up a large brimmed hat. A “cowboy” hat. He thanked the man and payed up in Union Credits. “Hey. I don’t take Union credits.” The man said. Tim sighed. “Look. I for these new CM credits, fell of a ship. Don’t got enough though. Can only pay half.” He replied. The store man sighed and expected, half Union half Mercanti. The deal closed and we left. Tim tipping his new hat to me, smiling. Chapter Two: Return to the Union. We walked back to the Stargazer and scanned ourselves at the door. It slid open and we walked in. Going down the hallway, I stopped in front of Waxleys door. Tim kept walking to the bridge to see how the others were doing. I decided I should talk To Waxley. His door slid open. I took a step in...his room was a odd one. The floor was slime, his vacuum strapped to the wall. Images of him and his family where everywhere. His species sleeps standing up so there was no bed. He was in the corner of his room, doing his best with those Clumsy hands to build some thing it would appear. Judging by the sparks, it appears to be a machine of some kind. “Ready for the flight back to the Union buddy...” I said. My voice trailing of near the end to to my awe at the sight of what he was doing when he moved away. A humanoid robot. It’s body was cylindrical. It had a dome like head. He seemed to be applying extra armor. It was not yet painted so it was all gray. There seemed to be a button on the chest. “Waxley...what is that...” I said hesitantly. “My new friend!” He excitedly replied. He doesn’t have a name yet, but once he’s done he will be our friend and servant no matter what!” Waxley was full of genuine joy. “Er...that’s great Waxley. Real great. Now we’re all going to eat some lunch, you want some or...? I said. Waxley nodded, which is kind of bobbing his whole body. “Yes! Let us go to lunch with friends!” He slipped past me pretty fast. When he was gone I look to the robot. A interesting development. Tim won’t be happy. I turned around and followed Waxley to lunch. Category:Story Category:Science-Fiction